[rrd-users] Fup: Bit off topic

[Alex van den Bogaerdt]

Hi again,

It seems I didn't make totally clear what I try to do.

I monitor the processor load on one of my servers.  This load will vary
over time.  As this box is used for interaction with humans, not batch
processing, I do not care very much about the average load.  I want to
see the peaks that occur.  It is at those peaks that performance is at
its worst.

If I would use averages for the weekly, monthly and yearly graphs, this
isn't good (in this case at least).  Therefore I use the maxima from the
one-minute samples.

I do get an excelent picture of it now, it shows clearly that peaks do
occur primarily during working hours, with an increase over the day 
(this indicates that some process takes more cpu power as the data to
process increases, IMO).  Also, it is rather constant and therefore it
can be used to notice problems, increased use, etcetera.

So my resulting graph is one that has pixels of 15 minutes wide, each
pixel representing the maximum load seen in that 15 minutes.  The lines
under this graph should explain what is seen and I prefer to keep the
explanation short but correct.

The collected data is, by nature, an average (this is true for almost
everything we monitor including network bandwidth) It is collected over
one minute.  What I have is the minimum maximum of averages, the average
maximum of averages and the maximum maximum of averages.  Sounds silly,
but until convinced otherwise I do think it is useful.

If the box has a load that is too high at any point during office hours,
it is time to upgrade, shift processes, add memory, whatever.

I do appreciate your input and from the responses I got it seems that
more people struggle with this issue.

Regards,
-- 
   __________________________________________________________________
 / alex at slot.hollandcasino.nl                  alex at ergens.op.het.net \
| work                                                         private |
| My employer is capable of speaking therefore I speak only for myself |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+

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